Nash Finch lobbying for county funding to expand its facilities, services

Wholesale food distributor Nash Finch is seeking help from Prince George’s County and the state of Maryland to expand facilities for its MDV subsidiary and to add more than a hundred jobs in the county.

MDV delivers food to dozens of military commissaries and exchanges across the country and overseas. The company is currently shipping 180,000 crates of groceries a week out of its 225,000-square-foot Landover warehouse, a former Giant Food storage facility that sat on the market for more than a decade before Nash Finch leased the property in May.

Currently, those crates are filled solely with dry goods. With the county’s assistance, MDV plans to expand its storage and shipping capacity to include refrigerated and frozen products and expects to add an estimated 103 workers at the warehouse.

Nash Finch has lined up $12 million in private equity investments and is seeking an additional $400,000 in conditional loans, split between the state and Prince George’s County. Under the terms of the proposal, so long as the company invests that $12 million and hires 100 new employees by 2016, the loans will be forgiven, converting them into government grants.

Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development has signed off on the package, but will not disperse the funds unless the county matches its $200,000. The request has the backing of County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D), who visited the site last week as part of a bus tour highlighting economic development projects in the county.

During his visit, Baker urged council members to approve the use of funding from the county’s $50 million economic development incentive fund, noting this was the type of venture that could spur other economic development projects in the county.

David Iannucci, the county’s deputy chief administrative officer for economic development, said that “this is consistent with so many purposes of the economic development incentive fund. It’s going to bring solid wages for that type of business.”

225,000
Square feet of space currently leased, in Landover, by Nash Finch.